Nunavut government moves to pay vendors a month after ransomware attack
Finance Department now promising prompt payment
Valter Botelho-Resendes, executive director of the Kitikmeot Chamber of Commerce, is seen on the right at his office in the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay. He says his chamber’s members are still owed large amounts of money by the Government of Nunavut, following the ransomware attack that shut down the government’s computers on Nov. 2. (Photo by Jane George)
The Kitikmeot Chamber of Commerce says that businesses it represents are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Government of Nunavut.
“We have some members stating that they are owed in excess of $500,000 and some have even reported being owed more than $1,000,000 combined from the different GN departments,” wrote Valter Botelho-Resendes, the chamber’s executive director, to Nunatsiaq News.
“When will these business owners see some relief cheques?”
The government only recently regained its ability to pay vendors following the ransomware attack that shut down its computer network on Nov. 2.
The GN is supposed to pay northern vendors after 20 days, but Botelho-Resende said some businesses have been waiting for much longer than that to be paid.
On Dec. 3 the GN said in a news release that it’s working to make sure there are “minimal delays” in vendors getting paid.
Nunavut’s deputy minister of finance, Jeff Chown, told Nunatsiaq News on Tuesday that once the GN gets invoices, vendors can expect to be paid “quite promptly.”
The GN does not pay interest unless it has a contractual obligation to do so, Chown said.
To get paid what they are owed, many vendors will have to resubmit invoices. To that end, the GN has created a list of departmental contacts and encourages vendors to go online for more information.
For invoices sent by email to the GN in the days leading up to Nov. 2, vendors should follow up with individual departments to confirm receipt of those invoices.
Invoices delivered by email from Nov. 1 to Nov. 17 will need to be resubmitted to the appropriate department.
Some vendors have criticized the lack of communication from the GN, but Chown said that the government could only recently contact them by email.
An earlier announcement for vendors did go up on Nov. 22 on the GN website, he said.
But Valter Botelho-Resendes said the chamber of commerce’s members felt they needed a central telephone number where they could have received guidance after the ransomware attack.
A couple of businesses that were “severely impacted” didn’t pressure the GN for payment because they didn’t want to be blacklisted, Botelho-Resendes told Nunatsiaq News.
Relief cheques issued to vendors would have also been appreciated, he said.
“The GN employees and people on social assistance were paid,” Botelho-Resendes said. “That’s great. Don’t get me wrong, but you also have a contractual obligation to your contractors so they can survive as well.”
When asked about that option, Chown said it wouldn’t have been practical to cut cheques to vendors while the computer network was down, because government workers couldn’t access past invoices.
Vendors’ services vary from year to year and, as a result, overpayments would have been likely, he said.
As for the cost of dealing with the fallout from the ransomware attack, Chown couldn’t say what the extra costs are yet.
“We’ll be trying to capture those costs as best we can,” he said.
In an earlier interview with Nunatsiaq News, Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq said those additional costs would be revealed during the winter session of the territorial legislature.
“Some vendors have criticized the lack of communication from the GN, but Chown said that the government could only recently contact them by email.”
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The GN had alternative email accounts for select people on Monday after the ransom attack. They could have sent emails if they wanted to, and if they had considered it important to do so.
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The GN seems to consider its suppliers as adversaries, rather than as partners in building Nunavut.
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The GN had email addresses and phone numbers available for the NNI registered businesses because they are in the directory of NNI registered businesses and NNI website was unaffected. For those few Inuit Firms registered with NTI that are not also registered with NNI, the GN could probably have gotten contact information from the NTI website. And then there’s the good old phone book.
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The GN could have contacted its Nunavut based suppliers if it had wanted to do so.
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Taima!
One month is not that bad. Have you ever tried getting a travel claim from QSO? The average wait time is about 3 months for it to be processed. So, you spend your own money to pay for things- put it on your credit card and incur the interest charges for 3-4 months. What a joke Finance there has turned out to be… still “working” on things from August and September. 1 month doesn’t look so bad anymore!